1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tetrahedral mesh generating method for finite-element analysis and a finite-element analyzing system using the method. More particularly, the present invention relates to a technology for automatically generating Multi-Resolution Representation (hereinafter, referred to as MRR) for analysis from a tetrahedral mesh with high quality suitable for analysis by using a computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Upon analyzing the physical characteristics of a material, such as the strength and the thermal degeneration with a Finite-Element Method (hereinafter, referred to as FEM), a mesh model is used to express a solid model of the material for Computer Graphics (hereinafter, referred to as CG), as a set of meshes.
Conventionally, the mesh of solid model is generated typically by FEM mesher which generates a tetrahedral mesh with high quality.
Further, Non-Patent Documents 1 and 2 disclose well-known mesh model generating methods.
[Non-Patent Document 1] Oliver G. Staadt and Markus H. Gross: Progressive Tetra-hedralizations, proc. of IEEE Visualization 98, pp. 397-402, in 1998.
[Non-Patent Document 2] H. Garland and Paul. S. Heckbert: Surface Simplification Using Quadric Error Metric, proc. of SIGRAPH 97, pp. 209-216, in 1997
At the earliest possible time of product development, it is requested that the product shape is determined by the Finite-Element Analysis (hereinafter, referred to as FEA). In order to satisfy the request, the efficiency of Computer-Aided Engineering (hereinafter, referred to as CAE) and the FEA requires the generation of mesh with high quality. Further, the automatic generation of mesh for analysis is required with high strength and high controllability.
However, the automatic generation of mesh for FEA must be improved in automatic generation of mesh with low resolution for complicated solid shape and characteristic control of flexible mesh. Here, the high-quality mesh indicates the small distortion of mesh and the high uniformity of mesh size. Further, the strong mesh-generating method for analysis means the stable mesh-generating-processing, and requires fast processing for generating the mesh with desired quality. Furthermore, the high characteristic-controllability means that the mesh with quality suitable for analysis is freely operated.